


Memories

by FlorentineQuill



Series: Doctor Who Oneshots [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, post NOTD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:14:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1935267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlorentineQuill/pseuds/FlorentineQuill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor goes to pick up Clara after the events of The Name of the Doctor and finds out she's been hiding hidden talents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the fantastic NoOrdinarySouthernGirl

“Clara? Clara!” The Doctor poked his head through the Maitland’s back door. He fidgeted, tweaking his bow tie. He had thrown the doors open after the TARDIS had materialized (without a hitch or a bump for once and those were rare when it wasn’t River — he stopped himself right there, tucking the ache away for later), expecting to find his Impossible Girl waiting on the back step for him. Even for him, the events after escaping his own timestream were more than a little blurry. Between Jenny’s chivvying and the combined strength of Strax and Vastra supporting him and Clara, they had managed to get back to the TARDIS. 

He vaguely recalled her throwing herself into the vortex, eager to be away from the painful paradox Trenzalore presented but he had passed out afterwards, embarrassingly enough. He would have much rather carried Clara back to the TARDIS with the others trailing behind him . . . The TARDIS had taken them back to Paternoster Row where they had spent several days sleeping, drinking tea, and generally recuperating under Strax’s careful eye and cheerful threats.

He shook his head and focused on the lack of Clara, here and now. He ambled into the kitchen and found Angie slumped over open textbooks, tapping at her mobile. “Oh, hello, Angie,” he said as she managed to tear herself away from whatever she was doing. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen your governess— er, nanny— er, I don’t suppose you’ve seen your Clara around, have you?” He winced. 

Angie’s eyebrow inched higher with every verbal stumble and she let out a put-upon sigh. “She might be in bed again,” she said. “She’s been sleeping an awful lot ever since you two came back this last time.” She bit her lip.

“Yes, well, only to be expected really,” he said and edged towards the hallway. He climbed the stairs two at a time, trying not to worry overly much. It was only to be expected, Clara was only human and humans weren’t meant to have more than one or two lifetimes running around in their minds. Oh, their little brains adapted well-enough but it took time. Look at how Amy and Rory had dealt with two or three different timelines— He slipped on the hallway runner and let the pain of knocking his shoulder against the wall distract him from the thought of his Ponds. He let out a yelp as one of the framed photos was jostled and he clapped a hand over it before it could slither down to the floor and what would have been an undoubtedly messy end, broken bits of glass everywhere

“You better not be breaking my house, Doctor!”

“I’m not breaking anything, Clara,” he snipped, hurriedly trying to put the picture back. The little hook-y bits were refusing to catch on the nails and he reached for his sonic screwdriver. A quick wave with setting 40326-mango and the picture was back on the wall, hook-y bits magnetized into finding the nails. 

“And stop sonicing whatever it is before you blow it up!”

“Don’t you have any faith in me what so ever?” he grumbled.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” 

He looked up and saw her leaning against her bedroom door, arms folded and one eyebrow raised. He sniffed, affronted, and then blinked. “Clara, what on earth are you _wearing_?” he asked. “You tease me about my bow tie—”

“Because it’s ridiculous,” she interrupted and sighed. “Then again, having seen some of your other outfits, the bow tie is high fashion by comparison.” She eyed his outfit. “God know what you were thinking with that celery or the coat that came after it.”

“Bowties are _cool,_ ” he sputtered (ignoring her comment about his past outfits) and eyed her right back. “Better than some paint-smeared t-shirt and-and-and— ” His brain stalled out for a moment as he took in the (very) short pajama shorts she was wearing. They were almost covered by the t-shirt, they were so short and really showed off her—

“Oi, eyes front, soldier!”

He blinked as she reached up and snapped her fingers in front of his nose several times. He stared at her hands, nearly going cross-eyed. “What is on your hands?” he asked, grabbing one of her wrists to inspect her fingers, liberally smeared with a mix of reds and oranges.

“Oil pastel, now let go before I get it all over your fancy clothes!” She wriggled threatening fingers in his direction and he took a hasty step back.

“Oil pastel?” he repeated. “When did you pick up oil pastels?”

Clara hesitated but Artie stuck his head out of his room. “She ran out and picked up a bunch of different art supplies last week,” he answered. “Been drawing and sketching like mad ever since. It’s all really good stuff too!”

“Artie!” Clara hissed but the boy only grinned and retreated back into his room.

“Clara?” The Doctor asked and she reluctantly met his gaze. “I didn’t know you drew,” he said gently.

“I didn’t,” she replied and he tried to ignore how his breath caught in his throat. She waved one pastel-smeared hand. “If I didn’t end up taking care of kids or computers, if they were around, something similar, I’d do a lot of art,” she explained. “And sometimes it— It just gets to be a little too gets too much and drawing or sketching helps me cope.” She managed a wry smile and tapped one finger against her temple, leaving a smudge of orange-red that was unfair in its utter adorableness. “Helps my brain organize every thing at least.”

“Well, that’s…good, I suppose,” he said after a minute. “Can I see any of them?” He clasped his hands together to keep from fiddling with his bow-tie. 

Clara shrugged and then bit her lip. “Sure. Um. Let me get the pastels off my hands?” 

“Fine, fine,” he said and waved his hands. 

She flashed him a grateful smile and slipped back into her room, shutting the door with an easy, exaggerated swing of her hips that made him swallow and think of the seven hundred constellations visible in the sky above this lovely little planet over in the Andromeda galaxy, she would probably like to see that— He shook his head before his mind wandered back to the dangerous thoughts that had sparked that particular tangent. 

He could hear her moving about, with lots of papers being rustled about and drawers being opened and shut. He leaned against the wall, careful to avoid dislodging any more photos and waited with a minimum of nervous fidgeting and resisting to fiddle with his sonic screwdriver. He eyed the hall light. Didn’t Clara mention that it was flickering? He could fix that in a jiffy, maybe improve the output by two or three percent— His fingers brushed over his trusty sonic, only to stop as Clara’s door swung back open.

“Doctor?” 

“Eh?” He managed and shook his head with a smile. “Sorry, distracted. Lots of funny thoughts in this old head.”

Clara eyed him for a moment before shrugging. “As you like.”

“So!” he said, clapping his hands together. “Artwork, eh? Any particular favorite medium or styles?” 

Clara let him step into her room and shrugged. “Depends on what I’m drawing, really. I like sketching with pens for some things but charcoal for others. It seems to change from life to life.” She wrinkled her nose. “Some mediums I can’t replicate, I remember painting with light one time but…” She shrugged again and waved a hand at a swath of papers spread out over her desk and bed. “Take a look, Chin Boy.”

He nodded and peered at the offerings on her desk first. It seemed to be a mix of different landscapes, varying wildly in location and type from what looked the forested slopes of a jagged mountain range to a bustling city scene that he was willing to bet was set on Starship UK, and portraits. He brushed a finger over a rough sketch of a boy and girl dressed for what looked like a Victorian spring. There were some scattered drawings of different clothes on faceless models. True to her word, there was variety in style and medium, with small watercolors on heavy paper or a snapshot of a busy spaceport scrawled out on thin newsprint in charcoal. A few of the portraits were done in pastels but she seemed to favor pen and ink for those, spots of color added with careful drips of watercolor. 

He stopped, blinking, as he recognized several of his earlier faces. “I didn’t know you got to see me so…well,” he said.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Clara said, stepping up to him. “Sometimes it just took a few small tweaks to make sure you didn’t do anything fatal.” She gave him an odd, side-long look. “It wasn’t all like the Asylum or with the Snowmen,” she said quietly. “I’d flip a switch or pass on a message and then go back to my life.” She frowned. “Don’t think I ever managed a soufflé that wasn’t too beautiful to live though. You’d think I would have managed that at least once…”

He let out a huff of amusement and turned his attention to the larger pieces on her bed. He recognized the first snowscape and swallowed. “You met the Ood, eh?” he asked. It was a simple painting, that framed one of the Ood elders in a cave entrance. “I like them. Well, I like them when they’re not being controlled by the devil or an evil sentient astroid…”

Clara snorted. “Who doesn’t like the Ood?” she asked. “They’re sweethearts.”

“We should visit them sometime,” he agreed. “I don’t think I’ve been back since I had to drop off a lost one.”

“Using the TARDIS like a taxi? I bet she must have just loved that,” she teased. 

He threw her a wounded look and turned away from the second snowscape on the bed, scarred and scattered with shuttle debris, a lone Dalek eyestalk sticking up out of the snow, done in thick, heavy inks that weighed down the medium-weight paper. He caught a flash of red and orange from under her bed and stooped, tugging at it.

“Doctor, don’t—!” Clara started to protest, only to stop as he froze, weight settled on his heels as he stared at the swathes of red grass and the way the two orange suns hung low over the horizon, framed by ragged mountains that would be silver and burnt orange under the snow. 

After a moment he slowly rose back to his feet, not able to tear his eyes away from the Gallifreyan landscape, his hearts feeling too large for his chest. “I don’t remember this,” he managed after a minute. “I— Where is this?” he asked, looking up at her, eyes too wide.

“It’s a valley set between two of the mountains of Southern Gallifrey,” Clara answered after a moment. “I— Well, one of me grew up there.” She brushed a finger over the lower of the two suns. “I think I might have been a TARDIS cultivator that time around. They liked the minerals in the mountains.”

“That time around?” he managed, his voice sounding rather croaky and she flushed.

“I was Gallifreyan a couple of times, at least that I can remember. You only met me, the once, in person,” she said, not meeting his eyes.

His lips twitched at that. “I remember. You were right though.” He bumped her shoulder with his. “Much more fun, knackered navigation and all.”

She managed a faint smile and he gently set the landscape down on her bed, trying to ignore how his hands were trembling and smudged with pastel. “Do you have any others of Gallifrey? I— I’d like to see them.” 


End file.
